Speaking to host Alex Marlow, he said that the vulnerability created by allowing people to vote by mail could give Democrats the advantage in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
In Patrick’s view, voting by mail would be "absolute pandemonium.” He added: "It’s wide open for fraud, and the left will take advantage of that and they will steal every election until the end of time.”
He pointed out that the life circumstances of many Americans can change between elections, with people possibly moving, getting divorced or even dying. He wondered what would stop someone from voting on behalf of a person who used to live at their address should their ballot be mailed there. This is something that he feels could tip the scale in favor of those looking to steal the election.
Patrick mentioned Greater New York Black Lives Matter President Hawk Newsome stating on Fox News that “if this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”
If people say they're willing to burn down the country or tear down statues, Patrick feels it's not a stretch to think that they would have no qualms about stealing some ballots from a mailbox.
Moreover, he pointed out that if Americans are going out in public already to restaurants or even protests, it's really not that unreasonable to expect people to vote in person.
In addition, Patrick said that counties and cities have been using money that they received from the federal government for coronavirus relief in order to advance their vote-by-mail efforts – which is something that he said seems to be a priority for Democrat-run cities.
For example, in Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson used $4.5 million in CARES Act funds to send applications for absentee ballots to all registered voters, leading to chaos for the local clerks who are normally in charge of this.
Michigan State Senator Ruth Johnson found that the applications had been mailed to hundreds of residents who are not eligible to vote, including deceased and underage voters as well as non-citizens.
There are so many ways mail-in voting can go wrong
Patrick is far from the only person to express concerns about mail-in voting. Even President Trump has taken to Twitter to voice his reservations about the system. It’s not a new issue, either; the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform that was co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter stated "absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud."
One of the biggest problems with mail-in ballots is that there is no accountability. There is no Social Security number, green card number, license number or any other identifier printed on the official ballot. That makes it impossible to verify just how many of these ballots are actually mailed to each person or residence.
In the mid-term elections of 2018, a North Carolina congressional election had to be overturned and then re-held after a Republican operative was caught using mail-in ballots to scam the system. In addition, data from the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows that more than 28 million mail-in ballots went unaccounted for between 2012 and 2018; more than 1 million of those went to an incorrect address in 2018 alone.
According to The Hill, around 1,600 ballots were found the morning after election day sitting in a mail processing facility in Chicago, while the State Board of Elections reports that hundreds more people who had applied for absentee ballots didn't receive them in time. The potential for votes being accidentally uncounted may be great, but the ease with which voter fraud can be carried out when mail-in ballots are used widely should make all Americans extremely uneasy, regardless of their party affiliation.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.
